Les Miserables: Volume I

Les Misérables is Victor Hugo's masterwork — a sprawling novel that grapples with some of the age-old themes of humanity and society, as well as some of the more revolutionary ideas that characterized French literature of the period.

The novel follows the intertwining stories of some of society's least fortunate characters, whose trials, travails and hardships give the book its evocative title. However, Les Misérables does far more than this, examining the interplay of law, love, politics, governance and history, as well as casting its eye upon those whose lives are washed away in time's flood.

Hugo published Les Misérables in 1862, but the ideas that would eventually coalesce into this masterpiece had been gestating for decades before this. It is believed that Hugo drew inspiration from events he himself witnessed in France in the 1830s and '40s, as well as a life spent researching and analysing some of the book's loftier themes. The result is a remarkable text and required reading for anyone seeking to better understand both the human condition and the society that shapes it.